← CRYPTO 101
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- [00:00]
A
Crypto 101 fam we're back again to talk about my favorite online shopping and it is quints. Lately I've just been more intentional what I wear every day. I've talked about it before the Florida heat. I got to be very intentional about my wardrobe and I'm leaning into pieces that feel easy, comfortable, but still put together. As the weather heats up in Florida, it just makes getting dressed simpler. Quince has my go to the fabrics feel elevated, the fits are clean and and everything just works. And I'm so busy on the podcast, I just don't want to overthink it. Quintess all the wardrobe staples for spring think 100% European linen shorts and shirts from $34. Lightweight, breathable and comfortable, but still look put together and clean. 100% Pima cotton tees with a softness that has to be felt. Their pants also hit the same balanced, relaxed and comfortable, but still polished enough to wear pretty much anywhere. Everything is priced 50 to 80% less because they cut out the middleman from your favorite brands. But. But don't sacrifice on the quality. Quince works directly with ethical factories to cut out the middleman. So you're getting premium materials without the markup. Guys, you heard me talk about quints for a long time now and it's because their clothes are awesome and the shopping experience is second to none. The online store is so fun. They have so many items and they've been a great sponsor to crypto one on one. So if you're thinking about getting some new clothes, go to quince.com refresher every day with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.com crypto101 for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Q U I N C.com crypto101 for free shipping and 365 day returns quint.com crypto101.
- [01:51]
B
All right, everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Crypto 101 podcast. I'm your co host, Bryce Paul, as always, joined by my good buddy Brendan Veeman from across the great, great land. How are you doing, man?
- [02:04]
C
You know, Bryce, I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Crypto's getting a bump here, so I'm pretty excited about that. It's hard. It's hard to complain at a time like this, right? Crypto's headed back upwards. The bulls are retaking control. So good time to be here in crypto.
- [02:18]
B
I love it. Well, I Hope everybody who's at home watching is excited. For today's episode, we've got Richard Green, who is incredible working at Root Stock Labs. He' the managing director of institutions and all around. Really, really excited to have you join us today. So Richard, how are you doing?
- [02:36]
D
Yeah, very well, thank you. Not too bad. As, as Brendan said, it's a, it's a good day to be in crypto, which is always a, a good thing to, to wake up to or to go to sleep too. So I'm super happy to be here to chat about it.
- [02:47]
B
Much better start to Q2 here than we had in, in definitely Q4 and Q1 was pretty brutal as well. But we're going to go ahead and get into some really positive things on Rootstock Labs, what you guys are building. But just first wanted to get acquainted with you, the audience let us know who you are. I mean, you've been, you know, building in Fintech kind of at the intersection of fintech stablecoins finance markets for, for well over 10 years. And so we just want to get a little sense of who you are and why you decided to work with institutions at Rootstock.
- [03:20]
D
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for that, Bryce. Like you say, I started my career in the more traditional finance data tech side of, at Bloomberg. Spent 10 or so years there going through everything from managing their customer support teams in Europe to selling their data and trading systems throughout banks and brokers and HFT desks and things like that. And then about 10 years into that journey, I, I realized there might be something else out there and that kind of came about a little bit predominantly through the FX side of the Bloomberg business and then stablecoins. So that's where I first saw the overlap because, you know, you seeing it a lot more being used in exchanges, people were using it for FX trading and there started to be a few questions around it. And so I was actually never that. I would love to, whenever I speak about this, I would love to be that person who said, you know, I got into crypto in 2010 and have that story of I missed out on the $1 or $10 or whatever Bitcoin price. For me, I was a little bit of a, a late joiner to the party and stablecoins were my introduction to that. And so I, I moved over and joined Circle and was very fortunate to be one of the first hires out in Europe. So we were looking at building out what we were doing there and it was amazing because we were, it was frontier, it was starting to get adoption. And so for Us it was then about obviously getting people to use stablecoins and getting that into mainstream. And I, we can talk about this a little bit later. But the, you know, the strategies that we use constantly changed because first we thought it might be to do with corporations and then we thought it might be to do for trading desks and things like that. And, but the, the thing that then took me further into, into the bitcoin side and with Rootstock Labs was as I was at Circle, I was seeing, went and saw in real life people using stablecoins from emerging markets, Latin America, Sub Saharan Africa and things like that. And, and really started to feel, well actually there's, there might be another alternative here to, to people wanting dollars because not everybody wanted dollars. And then obviously had been introduced to bitcoin a long, long time before that, but then really started to see the application of, of what bitcoin could be for. Not just for trading, not just for price appreciation for that, but those people in areas of massive inflationary pressure who needed something that was separate or government control. And so that's what ended in me, in me joining Rootstock Labs institutional side as well. And again we'll go into more detail, but about, well, the institutions are coming for bitcoin and how do we harness that and how do we build out an infrastructure for them?
- [06:00]
C
Yeah, and I want to write off that because I just heard you talk about how you are working at Circle. Obviously Circle is a little bit more stablecoin focused. I think you could even say maybe a little bit more altcoin kind of focused. But with what you're doing at Rootstock now, you're leaning into a little bit more of a bitcoin centered approach. What made you lean into being more bitcoin centric as opposed to stablecoins or any other area of crypto?
- [06:25]
D
Yeah, I think that the main thing for me was the technology aspect of it. So it wasn't necessarily the bitcoin token or the bitcoin actual price or anything like that. It was the bitcoin chain. And so seeing the ability of what you could do on that with things like routing payments, the capacity and you know, there's obviously questions around bitcoin capacity, but again, can go into. It was for me the, the, the fact that my personal view is that stablecoins should sit on bitcoin rails because for many different reasons it's, it's the great place for stablecoins to sit. So there was the technology side and then like I say, a lot of it was just to do with seeing what people needed in different parts. So there are obviously those emerging markets who need dollars or want access to dollars, but there are many emerging markets and governments who won't permit you to have dollars, so they don't want you to have dollars. And there's a tight monetary control over things. And so it was a super interesting place to go. Let's go deeper into that. Let's see what, what is for myself, what can be grown out and what can I learn about it. And look, get me wrong, I think stablecoins are br, and I think that there's a massive use case and that's the biggest adoption in terms of, you know, the, the payment side of things at the moment. But the bitcoin side offers. It offers an alternative, similar and contrasting view to all of those different parts of why you'd use stable coins. And. And I found that really interesting.
- [08:00]
B
Yeah, super cool. And so tell us a little bit about kind of, you know, how root stock has found a niche. You know, what is it that you guys are building that's really different from a lot of these other competitors? Because like you said, you're not, you know, launching some new coin, you're not launching some stable coins, you're not mining bitcoin. So people really are thinking like, well, what, you know, what kind of company are you? Are you a bunch of developers? Are you kind of. Can you give us the high level?
- [08:27]
D
Yeah, absolutely. So Roostock Labs was founded 2017, 2018, and it is a. It's a blockchain, but it is a layer two of side chain. And those terms get used interchangeably, but they are actually different. But I won't go into the differences, but we are contributors to the blockchain, so we are the infrastructure builders. And the way that I like to think about layer two or a sidechain is in like a motorway or a highway. You've got a big lane highway, a lane highway that's been built and cars are going along it and it's great and it works really well. But then more and more traffic goes along it and then it starts to slow down a little bit. And so then you might build an off ramp or an off road that goes over the top and that is going to, how allow for some traffic to go over the top of it. And maybe there's a fee that's charged to go over that, or maybe there's a. Yeah, absolutely right. Toll road. Or there's a differing reason that you take that. That road for what? For whatever reason. But it's still operating off and above the main highway that sits below. And then afterwards you drive along and you come back onto the main highway. And so those layer twos are kind of those off ramps or those toll roads. But I mean obviously the tolls are kind of different and they're usually cheaper on these but they're designed to be built to, to improve the main chain that was there. And so Rootstock Labs, when it was being founded, the idea was that Bitcoin is the, the, the true asset. It is the most pristine as a, you know, as a coin it is the most pristine form of collateral. However, one of the problems with it is it's not EVM compatible which is, you know what is on Ethereum and very simplistic way of saying you can write if statements on it. If this happens, do this via smart contracts. If I receive delivery of goods, then this should occur on the chain. And so the founders of Rootstock Labs built the ability for the first to build the ability of EVM compatibility on Bitcoin.
- [10:33]
B
So was that, is it also like smart, you know, you built smart contracts on top of Bitcoin. Is that kind of the way to think about it? Makes it more programmable and extensible?
- [10:43]
D
Exactly. It's smart contracts on top of Bitcoin. So then you have all the programmability that Ethereum offers with the true pristine collateral of Bitcoin and the security of the bitcoin chain. Everything that the Bitcoin chain has, you inherit. And that's what Rootstock Labs aims to do and still does. It aims to offer an alternative but be as close to the main chain, the layer one as possible. And so what that allows for is for developers and for people who want to build things with that smart contract ability to use the use Bitcoin but be able to build dapps on top, you know, trading dexs loan books and things like that, all within the defi space. And so, you know, Rootstock what built that and then where is move to? And what we're focusing on the, and at the moment is obviously the institutional side of business, which is, which is where I and the team come in. And you know, I think our view there is that there is obviously a big demand for institutions looking at Bitcoin. They want, don't go into more detail. They want yield. They might want loans against their Bitcoin as any normal business would operating outside of Bitcoin. But they, they want to then also think about well how can I inherit everything that came from Bitcoin itself as well. And how can I make sure that I'm on that, the bitcoin chain. And so we work with those institutions to basically educate them on what you can do on the rootstock blockchain. And, and that is our core goal. So we want to bring, whether it be asset managers, family offices who are looking for yield, or whether it be a datco or whether it be just a simple payments business with bitcoin on their balance sheet would come and say we want access to capital markets tools, ones that we used to in tradfi, ones that we used outside of that. And we from the rootstock lab side will go out and find partners who offer those to integrate onto the blockchain or bond to build from scratch. And as we're moving into the future, rootstock labs will also start to offer those kinds of, will start to be contributing to those kinds of solutions as well through vault products where we can actually see, okay, there is a gap in the market where a, let's say miners, bitcoin miners are being underserved. Bitcoin miners have a lot of bitcoin, their dollar poor and they want to use their bitcoin as collateral. So how do we build and offer something to that? So that's what we're building towards from the institutional side as well in the Future.
- [13:30]
A
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- [16:54]
C
Yeah, I'm curious what does the current adoption look like in this side? I was doing some research before this. I saw that you all over at rootstock have about 30% of all Bitcoin Fi or BTC Fi. Right. Which is like a play on Defi except for Bitcoin exclusively which is pretty impressive. But what is the current rate or look in terms of traction and adoption and who is using this?
- [17:22]
D
Yeah, absolutely. So you're absolutely right with that number. We hold about 30% of that market and our TVL is you know, ranging over the past couple of quarters around 250 to $300 million in TVL. And to give you some use cases and real life examples, we have a partner, Mercado Bitcoin and they are a large Latin American exchange and they are offering tokenized RWA real world assets. So might be tokenized treasury bills and things like that. And they've minted $40 million worth onto the Rootstock blockchain. So you're starting to see the, the, the BTC FI side growing, but also the RWA side connected to Bitcoin. So people wanting to use their Bitcoin to gain access to things like that. And so we also have partners integrated the likes of Midas Melo and Tier Capital. They're vault providers and they offer tokenized, could be hedge fund strategies or tokenized onchain strategies. And those again are in the kind of 10, 20 million TVL mark. So the, the what we are at a stage in terms of traction. It's, it's, we are at a stage where we are growing in terms of our numbers. But what we're seeing from behind the scenes as well is a number of businesses coming to us and saying we want to do something or we want to allocate capital. Where can we do that or what could the solution be towards that? Whether that be, you know, and without being able to share kind of too much in regards to this, very large players within Asia or very large players within Europe. And, and, and their point is we, we like what we're seeing happening from the Rootstock Lab side and the Rootstock side in terms of offering onchain capital, product, capital market products. We want to do something. Can you help guide us in what that could look like? And then you know, that's where we are talking about what can you do on the root stock chain? What could you terms of your own products and that, that aspect of things. So there's a large amount of commitments and demand coming from the market as well.
- [19:34]
C
Yeah, that, that makes sense. And so basically what, what I'm getting from this is that you guys are saying hey, we know that bitcoin is the first blockchain, it's the largest one, it's never been offline. It has, you know, basically a perfect track record since inception. And that's who you're appealing to this as. You're saying, let's get something that is truly decentralized, that has this perfect track record that is as well known and has as good of a reputation that bitcoin has. And you're saying that's kind of the people that you're pitching this to, which I think makes sense. I think one of the big things in crypto is where big advocates of saying, hey, let's build all these different options and let the people decide what they want. So, you know, if people want to use Ethereum, they can. If people want to use Solana, they can. But I think people should have an option to use Bitcoin if they want to, because there's a lot of people out there who say, hey, all I really do is mess with bitcoin. I keep it simple, I keep it traditional, and I think that's fine. So giving those people additional options ultimately expands the addressable market. You can have more people want to get in there, and I'm a big fan of that. My only question is, how does the scalability look like when you're comparing, you know, BTCFI to other chains, you know, say Solana, see to layer twos, say, to the Ethereum main chain itself. How does it compare in terms of scalability or efficiency?
- [20:53]
D
Yeah, and I agree with all of those previous points. I think that's exactly what we're wanting to do. And that's why Rootstock was built to be as close to the main chain as possible, because it is the most secure. And to be honest, when you talk about then the scalability, well, it's the most scaled because the amount of capital that is on Bitcoin, $2 trillion in market cap. It's, it's the most proven. It's the proven point. And so it has that security record as well. And I think that gone are the gone. And this is my experience from the traditional world of finance and technology, having a 99.99%, let's say uptime, having the scalability, it's not a good to have. It's. It's a necessary to have. It's the baseline. It's not that it's like, oh, well, maybe we, you know, I know that you've had a few hacks or you've had a bit of downtime, or you can Come around it. I think there are players out there who can still get by with that. But for an institution moving massive sums of capital or offering it even eventually, whether it be retail customers or to their institutional clients, you have to have that. And so scalability, you know, I think there's a lot of conversation around, can Bitcoin handle all of this volume that's coming in? And then there's a lot of conversation around, can that layer twos handle that? Right. Whether it be Rootstock or whether it be Lightning? And to be honest with you, yes, I think that it's something where all of this, all of these questions around that it's the, the, the ability to build and improve is there. Rootstock knows exactly what it needs to do. If it needs to manage scalability, Lightning know exactly what they need to do, or the contributors exactly know what they need to do in terms of improving that scalability. So that isn't a concern for, for me, I think that whilst the other chains, the likes of Ethereum and Solana, are incredibly strong at cheap, fast transactions, my fundamental view is that there's still a lack of, whether it be regulation clarity around that or whether it be fragmentation of capital and liquidity and whether it be uptime or hacks, Bitcoin remains the one that has proven all of these. And not to go even into more detail, but I'm sure that people have heard about the whole risk of quantum and hacks and things like that. And what's Bitcoin doing to solve that? What are the core contributors doing to solve that? And you're seeing many differing views of it's three years away, it's five years away. There are still, there are people who are incredibly smart and a million times smarter than I am who, who see that and are building towards that. So, yes, it is difficult to improve in certain ways. It's not like it's not being addressed. So I think that the, the scalability has already been proven and whether you're looking at the payments of Block and Jack Dorsey and running the massive amounts through Bitcoin, it's there. And if it needs to be increased, people know what to do to do that.
- [24:10]
B
Yeah, interesting. And yeah, I think the security is, is the, the main thing that people are focused on right now. Obviously there was recently the big hack in Ethereum for the kelp Dao and Aave, like $300 million of, of counterfeit money that was getting used essentially in Ethereum, you know, and Ethereum is just a really big target.
- [24:35]
D
Right.
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B
Because that's where all the money is. And you know, bitcoin's been a big target for a long time as well. You know, has Rootstock ever, you know, been the target of, of similar kinds of hacks or has it had to deal with kind of any adversity like that as, as well or has, have the, the numbers not been as large enough to be compelling for, for hackers yet?
- [24:58]
D
No, you know, I, I, I would hate hasten to say like consistently, but we are always aware of these things happening. We've, we've never been hacked. We have 100% uptime. And so those are the two things to say before all of this. We have one of the best, I would say, security contributing teams out there working on the chain consistently. And it's a top priority for us because I think when you look at, when you look at an institution or when you look at even any kind of user, the, the way that they're bringing their Bitcoin onto A layer 2 is usually by a bridge. And that is where you're seeing the majority of hacks occur. Right? Bridge risk is a huge thing. Counterparty risk is the counterparty going to get, risk going to get hacked. We have an incredibly secure bridge, it's called the power peg. And again, going to go into details of how that is so secure but, but it's been the reason of why we haven't been hacked now. But on the flip side, yeah, I mean we have incidents again that occur not regularly, but they will be, they will be coming to us. And I think that the thing that you can just do about that is to make sure that you're constantly investing in the technology, you're constantly improving it. And that's what's great about, I think the fact of being built on bitcoin. We have 80% of the hash rate that runs Bitcoin secures Rootstock. So what I mean by that is you would basically have to control roll 80% of all the mining power, the mining computers to have any, any influence over Rootstocks, let's say movement of capital, which is pretty unrealistic to, to ever occur. And that's one of the beauties of Bitcoin. And so why does Bitcoin, you know, not get hacked? Because it's not that it's unhackable, but it's, it's, it's close to. Whereas the more you add technology on top, the easier it is to find a broken door. And that from the institutional side is where we have to be just super, super clean. Super clear when we're working with clients. And again I can go into that in more detail of how we do that. But whether that be through custody, whether that be custodying with the right partners, working with the right integrations from if they're generating yield products and things like that, it has to be best in class at all times.
- [27:32]
B
Totally. And, and yeah, like I, I definitely think, you know, bitcoin is, you know, the best base money for Defi to happen. It, you know, I think it's just been slowed down because the maybe core developers aren't as focused on Defi. They're more focused on just building, you know, a secure network that's you know, nation state resistant to hacking and all this kind of stuff like focus on really secure long term stuff as opposed to shorter term applications or whatever.
- [28:01]
D
And so, and remember, you may, you've also got the, the, the benefit and also the cost of bitcoiners being bitcoiners. Bitcoiners, whether you're, you know, if you're a maxi bitcoiner, you believe that bitcoin is the only thing. And so Bill, even Rootstock building a sidechain L2 on top of it raises questions with the most.
- [28:25]
B
It's controversial.
- [28:27]
D
It's controversial. Controversial at any point, you know, any, like we say, any addition on top of bitcoin can sometimes be seen as. Well, I don't actually think that that's the right thing to do. So if I'm a core contributor and I have that belief, would I, would I support that? Luckily, at Rootstock we have some of the best, whether that be the likes of Sergio Lerner, but who are constantly thinking about that. But it's incredibly beneficial on the other side as opposed to maybe Ethereum or Solana. Maybe you get it with Ethereum, but you never walk around too many people and you hear everyone talking about how much of a Solana that Solana they are.
- [29:06]
C
Right.
- [29:07]
D
You know, they love the Solana chain and they love the use cases, but they're not a bitcoiner. And bitcoiners are the only people out there who are bitcoiners. You might have some on the Ethereum side, but you are consistently trying to. And what we have to constantly think about is how do we make sure that we are not upsetting two sides or one side, but we are building to the future as well. What is the future market? And like you say, maybe bitcoin was slowed down a little bit by that because Ethereum was looking to all the amazing, exciting things you can do on Ethereum. With Bitcoin, it's a little bit of a slower burn, but I think it's been beneficial in ways because now you're seeing the paybacks to the institutions because it was a slower burn. The safety is there, the liquidity is there, the security is there. Totally.
- [29:57]
B
No, I love that. And I'm curious, you know, from institutional adoption terms, what, what some of the coolest inventions or things that they've been experimenting with have been particularly like leveraging something like Rootstock.
- [30:14]
D
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think we, the probably the three main use cases that we're seeing people think about how they can be in innovative is around the custody side. It is answering the question that is I want to my bitcoin to be productive, but I don't want to lose custody of it. And how do I then get my bitcoin out there working but keep it as safe as possible? So you're obviously seeing the likes of, I mean this is like the big names, right? Fireblock, Salt, Copper, but then also other names who integrated with those like Fortify and Utila. Really going close into and thinking about how do we meet the. The bitcoin at the beginning and then also get them to deploy the, to deploy the capital. So it's around the custody side and then the other side, I would say is around getting them to actually get what can they do with their bitcoin. And that is around the loans aspect. So that will be an. In a business who is thinking, okay, I want to use my bitcoin as collateral and I want to then borrow dollars against it. But when you're talking to miners, for example, they have a very different way that they want to structure that than a datco. A DATCO will want to do the same thing, but they'll want to do it in a different way. So you know, within Rootstock Labs, that's what we're assessing and thinking about like what's the term structure? The loan to value size is very different. The payback looks very different. And so when you're thinking about that with different businesses, then then that's. Then, then that's. Then that's quite difficult to achieve. And then it's on the yield side. So you know, I mentioned them earlier, but someone like Mercado Bitcoin, they are putting together access to RWAs through, through Bitcoin and that's super exciting because you can gain access to a very stable yield source while still keeping that bitcoin collateral. The likes of Melo and Midas, who are Integrated on chain as well. When you are a asset allocator, what you are thinking about is how you are at a bit of a crossroads because you are quite used to deploying into the world of defi and getting yield from second one if I was to go into AAVE and offer out my USDC as a borrow or a supply, I'd start accruing yield from literally the moment of deployment because it's atom, it's called atomic and it and it and I can withdraw it at any time as long as there's that. But when you're going into a little bit more of the world of tokenized tradi coming on chain, well usually with tokenized hedge or hedge funds or trading strategies you might have a 30 day lockup period. You put your capital in and you have 30 plus days before you can get that out again. For the maybe defy user or people from the the large allocator side or even the bitcoin holder side. Like there's no way I'm going to lock up my Bitcoin for 30 days. It's just not going to happen. I need immediate returns. And so Midas I've I've been working on that incredibly hard and thinking about how can we make it so that if I put money in or bitcoin in I can get bitcoin out straight away. And so those kinds of things where it's crossing the chasm of traditional finance and what the world of defi and blockchain technology can actually bring to these new these new offerings. If you work in university maintenance, Grainger
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- [35:32]
C
Yeah, no, I was just curious. You know, there's clearly a lot of adoption happening here, right? And that's one of the things that we notice on the podcast. But in terms of, of bitcoin finance adoption, right, this specific area, what do you think is maybe constraining it the most or holding it back the most? Is there any kind of like open the floodgates moment that you think could unleash a lot more capital into this area, increase usage and TVL and whatever else it might be? You know, is there anything that you think is holding it back from the potential of what it could be?
- [36:10]
D
Yeah, I think the, the things that are holding it back from what it could be are the, the perceived risk. The biggest one is probably the perceived risk around custody and again parting with bitcoin as mentioned. And then also the are added on top of that, such as bridge risk, such as counterparty risk. These are all new risks for a lot of allocators. If, if I look and I've got a choice of putting my, let's say dollars into a bitcoin etf, bitcoin spot, or then going into bitcoin and going into defi. There are three different users or allocators and they're three different use cases. And they've got problems, not problems, but they've got things to address at each stage. And for us on the bitcoin defi side, three things are the, are the, I would say the biggest hurdles because people are yet to understand the technology behind it. People are used to the bitcoin ETF and then use that as a gateway drug into holding pure Bitcoin themselves. Right? And if you're from you trying to move them up there, up the, up the bitcoin curve into eventually defi and, and anything that occurs in the market, like we saw with KelpDao all of that usually sees a reduction in capital away. So there's still that crypto wrap around it. I think in terms of what could open the floodgates here, I'm not going to say that it's like more infrastructure because I think that the infrastructure is there. There is already incredible qualified custodians, there's incredible strong asset managers. We have bitwise $15 billion or something assets under management. So that there's those kinds of things. And then also within the actual defi side there are people who are really ready and willing to allocate. They're just unsure of what the actual solution is. And so I think it's an education piece. I think that education is going to, it's just catching up to the curve of what's been buil already. So I, I don't think that there is a problem on the infrastructure side. I think that again you then look out to the wider macro environment and Bitcoin. You can talk about whether we're having a four year cycle, whether it being attached to the US macro monetary policy environment, whether they're dovish and hawkish and moving rates or whatever. And I think that bitcoin now it's, Bitcoin sits as an asset class on its own. There's very, very rel. Very relevant and, and correlated to specifically the US economy. So I think that what could drive that and what could see the floodgates open? Well, my view is that as currencies continue to debase, as there continues to be probably a push towards deflation rather than inflation, the fact that I just do not see countries not printing more and more money because they, they're not, you know, they're not getting tax, the tax dollars in then people will start to move towards Bitcoin and what Bitcoin offers. So you know, it's that we talk about the still early phase from Bitcoin and you know, slowly, slowly, then all at once. I don't think it's going to be there but I do think that it's going to be connected to the macro side. I think it's going to be connected to just people moving continually up the bitcoin knowledge, a kind of curve. And you know again the more and more exposure that people are getting to it, whether it be through especially like in the US through the, the, in the financial advisors, through pay ability to do it through pensions, health insurance, it's those kinds of things.
- [40:10]
C
I, well I was just gonna say I agree with that. I think that as time goes on, people will try to find ways to avoid inflation. Inflation is going to continue to happen it basically. And as people seek an alternative, they will slowly put money in the bitcoin, probably other alternative assets as well. And as time goes on, you have again a set amount of bitcoin and you have an infinite amount of possible fiat currencies. And so over the long term, I really like that you phrased it like that because, you know, I don't know if we're going to see this, this blow up moment where we go from 80,000 where we're at right now to a million dollars overnight or over the course of a week. Maybe we do, right? We've had some really big runs in the past. But I think the more convincing argument for me is rather than pitch everyone, hey guys, we're going to be at a million dollars in a week, a month or whatever, it's going to be this super fast track moonshot, you know, that's a possibility. We've seen stuff like that in the past. But I think the much more convincing argument for people to kind of bring them in is say hey, Fiat will continue to inflate. People will constantly try to put money into something that is alternative. And that is the nice thing about bitcoin is that when you look at its inflation compared to just about every other fiat, it starts getting really appetizing. And then you add things in like its network value and its activity and you start talking about finance in different ways. And I think that just adds overall value to, to its chain, right to the underlying asset. I think that's why so many people like it in the first place. Place anyway.
- [41:43]
D
Absolutely. And sorry to, sorry to jump in there, but I completely agree and I think that bitcoin, when I speak to people and they say what's your view on bitcoin within the next year or whatever, my answer to that is I don't care because my horizon and what the horizon should be is 10, 20, 30 years. So it's dollar cost averaging and this is an investment advice. But it is something where it is a long term store of value where look, so it might not be for me, but it might be for my kids. And it's just where if you're putting away a little bit every month that over time, based on the compounded annual growth rate of what we've seen in bitcoin in the past to now and the volatility, I saw a chart that now I think the volatility of bitcoin over a One year period is lower than Meta and Tesla could be from Bitwise. I could be wrong on that, but I'm pretty sure it's one year. And so the maturity is there, the liquidity is there and your event horizon isn't. It's about getting settled and understanding you are here for 10, 20, 30 years, 20, 45, 20, 20, 50 is the year that you're looking and going, okay, this was a smart investment as, as opposed to, and you know, in terms of other allocations that you've also made. And that's what these asset allocators are looking at. It's not just bitcoin, it's not just ETFs. It is alongside all of this, I'm going to allocate a small percentage to Bitcoin. I'm going to allocate a small percentage to the Bitcoin ETF as well, for whatever reason. And then I'm just going to continually compound that over time. And so I think that's what we're seeing a lot more people coming into.
- [43:23]
B
Yeah, you can't look at it just in a vacuum, but kind of alongside all of these different asset classes.
- [43:30]
D
And we wanted it right every day we want to wake up and we want to see that moon. Right. Because we all believe in it. And I think that's again the hard thing to move up, move away from because crypto is and used be so up and down, but it's settling back in and going okay, this is, this is, this is long term savings. This is, Bitcoin is long term savings. And, and in certain worlds it's payments. And then Obviously in the Roo Labs world it's DeFi and it's BTC Fi. But it's a savings device.
- [43:57]
B
Yeah, no, it's fascinating. It's, it's cool how bitcoin could take many different shapes for many different people. It means many different things to everybody. And so know, it just goes to show how much, you know, long term value there is and you know, in, in terms of the short term, over the course of the next, you know, seven or eight months or whatever, however long there is until the year is over. Do you have any you know, final sort of big predictions or things that all of our listeners should be looking out for, whether that's, you know, specifically some big releases that, you know, Rootstock is planning or your personal predictions on where the market is going or big institutions? Any final words for the, for the listeners?
- [44:39]
D
Yeah, absolutely. I, I can split that into three. From the Rootstock side, we're like I said, we're growing out the, the on chain capital market side of the business. So that will be something that's B2B and it's something where we're wanting to make bitcoin productive. So you'll see a lot more announcements in that space. I think what do I see in terms of the industry and, and where that's going? I think the next thing that you're going to see outside of, of bitcoin is obviously the focus on tokenizing stocks. And that's probably going to be the biggest focus and the biggest play within that. And I think on the bitcoin side of things, you're going to see, you know, we're coming back into the 79,000, $80,000 range. I would love to see that just continually slowly grow. And that's what we're all. And I'm not saying that that's what I think, you know, is, is going to be the case, but I think that that's what we would all love to see. And, and the institutions offering more and more ETFs is going to really help within that space because there's going to be consistent buyers within, within the, within the bitcoin world. And then no, I think that look, you know, my words of advice to, to any listener is for me, bitcoin is the entry point. You get, get used to Bitcoin, understand Bitcoin, understand why people use it. And you won't only understand then what crypto is about, but you'll start to understand the defi communities and what people are about there. Because bitcoin is the biggest one. And so for me it was eye opening to come go from stable coins into Bitcoin and go, hold on a minute. There are people here who love, it's like saying there's all of these groups who love the dollar who just get together and have events and talk about the US dollar and all of these telegram chats, discord chats, right? It's like, but you get, get access to it and then you start to get, I get this is, this is what crypto is. It's communities and then it's utility and its use cases. So I always think that it's the, the, the, the best place to start. And, and like I say, right, think in years, don't think in weeks. That's, that's what it's, what it's about. And then think in technology, don't think in token. It's what is this actually doing? If you wouldn't buy a a stock just because you think that the name is of the stock is cool. I don't know, maybe you, maybe you would, maybe you put a bit in it, but you're buying it because it's an unbelievable business underneath it. And that's what it has to be. It has to be an unbelievable technology behind that. You think is going to change the future. Yeah.
- [47:11]
B
Could couldn't have said it better. And it's such a great kind of note to to wrap on. And so, Mr. Richard Green, we really appreciate you spending the time time with us from Rootstock Labs. We hope to have you back on again in the future to discuss some big updates. But until then, where can people kind of find out more about you and whether that's socials or blog as well as the company and we'll put that in the show notes.
- [47:35]
D
Yeah, absolutely. So everyone can reach out on rootstocklabs.com forward/institutional. And we've got a Contact Us page on on there. And so that's probably the best place.
- [47:45]
B
Beautiful.
- [47:45]
D
Wonderful.
- [47:46]
B
All right. Well everybody at home listening. We hope you enjoyed as much as we did. Come on back same time, same place next week and we'll have some more great guests for you. Take care.
- [48:08]
F
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